Wozniak: Cloud Computing Will Cause "Horrible Problems"

"Wozniak didn't offer much in the way of specifics . . . . [but said, 't]he more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it.'" Steve Wozniak was the inventor of the Apple I and Apple II computers.

More at Business Insider. You can find more re- the kinds of problems I worry about by clicking on the label, "Worldbeam," at the bottom of this post.

Google: Censorship Requests "Alarming"

Per HuffPo:

Google has received more than 1,000 requests from authorities to take down content from its search results or YouTube video in the last six months of 2011, the company said on Monday, denouncing what it said was an alarming trend.

* * * * *
Many of those requests targeted political speech, keeping up a trend Google said it has noticed since it started releasing its Transparency Report in 2010.

"It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect — Western democracies not typically associated with censorship," said Chou.

In the second half of last year, Google complied with around 65 percent of court orders and 47 percent of informal requests to remove content, it said.

(Emphasis supplied; more at the link.) It's even more alarming that it's reached the point that even Google finds it alarming.

Google vs. Bloggers

A new user interface is being forced on us bloggers. My and others' experience indicates it's harder to use and offers much less control over the look of posts. Presumably it's also designed to facilitate greater incursions on our privacy. So far, we've been allowed the option to continue to use the old interface, but that's supposed to end soon.

Tenuously related UPDATE: Google's now getting heat from regulators for its collection of people's emails and other private data in the course of its street view photography – invading our privacy without our permission or knowledge – and then lying about it to regulators; more at Wired.

Dead Drops

"‘Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space. Everyone is invited to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data. Each dead drop is installed empty except a readme.txt file explaining the project. ‘Dead Drops’ is open to participation. If you want to install a dead drop in your city/neighborhood follow the ‘how to’ instructions and submit the location and pictures."

By Aram Bartholl; see deaddrops.com for more, including how to install.

If You Wish to Avoid the Dept. of Homeland Security's Attention

. . . you should minimize your use of the hundreds of terms listed at Animal on social media sites (or elsewhere online?) I was going to list some of them for you so you could see how ridiculous many of them are, but I prefer to avoid the DHS's attentions – although just mentioning them may be all it takes. (But really, terrorists might be planning a tornado?)

Rebecca Mackinnon: Consent of the Networked

If you don't read her book, at least watch this:

(Another irresistible re-blog from Boing Boing).

Clay Shirky on PIPA and SOPA

Excellent overview of where these bills are coming from and what we should expect going forward, at TED.

Temporary Hiatus for Big Project

I'm working on a multimedia art/reality project that will consume my every waking moment for the next several weeks. I'll reveal more when it's done.

Until then, please bear with my silence; and check back here around the end of September! I promise, I shall return! With good stuff!

(And if you live in Dallas and would like to help, pls contact me.)

(And b.t.w., no, I don't believe the world's ending any time soon. It may be the end of the world as we knew it; but I believe we're on our way to re-creating a better version – I'm working on it, and send my love to all others who are, too.)

Feds Indict Coder/Activist for Downloading Too Many Academic Articles (Infowar - Round 2?)

Per TPM, "coder turned activist" Aaron Swartz has been arrested and charged with "breaking into MIT's network and using an automated program to download more than four million articles from JSTOR, an online database of academic journals maintained at MIT between late September 2010 and early January 2011."

Swartz is the former executive director and founder of Demand Progress and co-founder of Bold Progressives, two orgs whose efforts I support, f.w.i.w. TPM also describes Swartz as a prodigy who "has been involved in building many aspects of the web that everyone uses on a daily basis, and concludes:

Demand Progress' Executive Director David Segal professed puzzlement at the Tuesday development. "This makes no sense," he said on the group's blog "it's like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library."

"It's even more strange because JSTOR has settled any claims against Aaron, explained they've suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute," he added.

But this could be a political statement from Swartz, since he's been a long-time activist on copyright issues. As the indictment notes, Swartz is a fellow at Harvard's Center for Ethics, where his mentor Larry Lessig is the director.

The indictment notes that Swartz could have accessed the research there, but chose instead to break into MIT's network.

(Emphasis supplied.) More at TPM (thanks, Donna!) and the Demand Progress blog.

The implication seems to be that Swartz may have acted in deliberate provocation – possibly to bring to a head the issue of whether information should, per the "Hacker Ethic," be free.

Swartz's act may in fact have been intended as the next salvo in the infowars.

UPDATE: Just got these links: to ask your FB friends to sign on in support or to tweet it.

FURTHER UPDATE: Swartz supporter dumps 18,592 JSTOR docs on Pirate Bay.

A 31-year-old American who says his name is Gregory Maxwell has posted a 32GB file containing 18,592 scientific articles to BitTorrent. In a lengthy statement posted to the Pirate Bay, he says that Tuesday's arrest of onetime Reddit co-owner Aaron Swartz inspired the document release.

"All too often journals, galleries, and museums are becoming not disseminators of knowledge—as their lofty mission statements suggest—but censors of knowledge, because censoring is the one thing they do better than the Internet does," he wrote.

More at ars technica.

Ideas for Facebook Apps

(1) "Who Are My Sycophants?"; and

(2) "Of Whom Am I on the Brink of Becoming Categorized as a Sycophant?"

Tales of Hacking, Madness, and Obsession

Amazon.com currently has available four copies of Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness, and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier by Suelette Dreyfuss (1997). They do not mention that the book was written by Dreyfuss "with research by Julian Assange." The copies are all used paperbacks and are priced from $349.94.

I could be wrong, but I thought I saw a downloadable copy somewhere on the 'net within the last 15 seconds . . . now where was it . . . .

Anyway, below is the long but fascinating video of a 2011-07-15 program with Assange, philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now (a somewhat larger version and a full transcript are available here). The venue for the program was cancelled twice because, the hosting organizations explained, the program was "too controversial," so the program ended up at the Frontline Club, well outside of London center; nonetheless, the 2,000 seats were sold out at £25 each.

By the way, the hearing is ongoing on Assange's appeal of the U.K. court order approving his extradition to Sweden; blow-by-blow at The Guardian.

The Hacker Ethic

I've been reading Hackers by Steven Levy (1984, 1994); 25th Anniversary edition here. The book recounts the seminal exploits of a relatively small number of nerds who, during the late 1950s through the early '80s, created the basic architecture of computer cognition and memory that we inhabit today.

The meaning of the term, "hacker," has been hijacked since Levy's first edition was published. Now, it's used to suggest a cyber-burglar or worse, who steals or vandalizes for her/his personal profit or pleasure.

But originally, the term simply referred to one who creates computer hardware or software. Levy's "hackers" wrote the operating systems and visual interfaces that brought the mammoth, early computers under our recreative as well as productive control and developed the first widely-available personal computers, among other accomplishments.

And as the Amazon "product description" adds, "[t]hey had a shared sense of values, known as 'the hacker ethic,' that still thrives today."

The "hacker ethic":

1. Access to computers – and anything that might teach you something about the way the world works – should be unlimited and total.
   
   
2. All information should be free.
   
   
3. Mistrust authority; promote decentralization.
   
   
4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
   
   
5. You can create art and beauty on a computer.
   
   
6. Computers can change your life for the better.

(See Hackers by Steven Levy, p. 34 {2010 O'Reilly Media, Kindle Edition}.)

For years, these hackers worked day and night, driven by the sheer joy of creating something really cool, and receiving little or nothing more for their efforts beyond the respect of their few, similarly-obsessed fellows. They freely shared the programs and equipment they created, each helping the others to improve and de-bug their creations. As far as they were concerned, none of it should be owned, so none of it could be stolen.

The hackers inhabited a sort of cyber-utopian anarchy in which the only abuse that occurred consisted in the wrong-headed efforts of bureaucrats to restrict access based on claims such as a need for "security." And it was the hacker ethic that made possible the incredible flowering of human potential that occurred during this first decade or two leading up to the commercial success of personal computers and p.c.-based video games.

For me, the fact that such a benevolent anarchy can and has in fact endured for an extended period was one of many interesting revelations afforded by this book. It also provides what seems to be a conscientiously compiled history of our subsequent fall from this Eden, as well as a wealth of details about key, individual hackers and their deeds.

I read the paperback and then bought the e-book; recommended as an invaluable resource.

I recently came across an interesting site, datalove, propounding similar principles:

Data is essential
Data must flow
Data must be used
Data is neither good nor bad
There is no illegal data
Data is free
Data cannot be owned
No man, machine or system shall interrupt the flow of data
Locking data is a crime against datanity
Love data

Datalove appears to be affiliated with Telecomix, one of the Anonymous-type organizations involved in efforts to help Egyptian protesters circumvent Mubarek's shut-down of the Egyptian internet.

One of the nerds described in Levy's Hackers was John Conway, who created the computer game of Life, in which the goal is to design simple, graphic life-forms and then observe how their community either dies out or achieves immortality; below are gifs showing two "immortal" results from this game: (1) a single Gosper's Glider Gun creating "gliders" and (2) a breeder that leaves glider guns in its wake:

Telecomix and We Rebuild

Telecomix seems perhaps to be a subset of We Rebuild, or a term associated with certain news and other functions? Among other efforts, Telecomix worked to provide alternate communication channels during the Mubarek regime's shut-down of Egyptian internet access (see Egypt/Main Page).

We Rebuild describes itself:

We Rebuild is a decentralized cluster of net activists who have joined forces to collaborate on issues concerning access to a free Internet without intrusive surveillance. . . . There are no leaders, nor members. We Rebuild is simply an international chaotic event, and our actions can not be predicted in detail. We are a flow of passions, and we sometimes refer to our driving force as “data-love”.

. . . . The We Rebuild initiative promotes and participates in building the Internet to be accessible for everyone everywhere, enabling true freedom of speech. This is something which can not be guaranteed by states or corporations, but requires the polyvocal voice of the Internet. You will run in to us when you least expect it, especially if you are making decisions about the Internet. But since our strategies are based in the passionate sharing of ideas, you will most likely be happy to see us.

More at the WeRebuild wiki and the Telecomix News Agency; see also Datalove.

Why We Need Net Neutrality: ISP's Are Already Throttling the Internet

If you had any remaining doubt as to whether and how much this is happening, wonder no more. Two projects have shown that Comcast and Road Runner consistently engage in substantial, discriminatory slowing or throttling of internet traffic (euphemistically referred to as "shaping") both to and from users, and that "Comcast, Road Runner (from Time Warner Cable), and Cox all use downstream shaping." (More at Boing Boing)

They claim they only do it to help manage traffic volumes. But there are many examples of known, wrongful censorship of political or other content, within as well as outside the U.S.; see, e.g., here (Comcast and/or Symantec blocked all e-mails containing URL of site calling for investigation into whether Pres. Bush committed impeachable offenses in connection with the push to invade Iraq, successfully reducing the impact of activists' efforts), here (AT&T censored Pearljam concert by deleting lyrics criticizing Bush), or here (Mindspring and OneNet Communications, successively, blocked site hosting Nuremburg Files).

As Lawrence Lessig stated in a recent article, "The innovation commons of the Internet threatens important and powerful pre-Internet interests. During the past five years, those interests have mobilized to launch a counterrevolution that is now having a global impact."

Bad enough that, as "Napoleon said . . . it wasn't necessary to completely suppress the news; it was sufficient to delay the news until it no longer mattered." But worse, ISP's can suppress any info they choose in ways that make it unlikely that many users will ever become aware that anything's been filtered out.

And as stated at sp!ked-IT with reference to Wikileaks, among others, "when an ISP removes [or blocks] content, it invokes the cyber equivalent to the death sentence. When an ISP acts it can effectively destroy a business or censor a political campaign, by making access to that website impossible.

If you agree that protecting the internet as a source of uncensored political information is one of the most urgent issues of our time, please spread the word about it.

Recent Assange on Facebook et Al., the Media, War, Etc.

Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and their communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo – all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use.

Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by US intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure on them. And it’s costly for them to hand out records one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.

* * * * *

Our No. 1 enemy is ignorance. And I believe that is the No. 1 enemy for everyone – it’s not understanding what actually is going on in the world. It's only when you start to understand that you can make effective decisions and effective plans. Now, the question is, who is promoting ignorance? Well, those organizations that try to keep things secret, and those organizations which distort true information to make it false or misrepresentative. In this latter category, it is bad media.

It really is my opinion that media in general are so bad that we have to question whether the world wouldn't be better off without them altogether. They are so distortive to how the world actually is that the result is . . . we see wars, and we see corrupt governments continue on.

One of the hopeful things that I’ve discovered is that nearly every war that has started in the past 50 years has been a result of media lies. The media could've stopped it if they had searched deep enough; if they hadn't reprinted government propaganda they could've stopped it. But what does that mean? Well, that means that basically populations don't like wars, and populations have to be fooled into wars. Populations don't willingly, with open eyes, go into a war. So if we have a good media environment, then we also have a peaceful environment.

(Emphasis supplied.) More at RT.

Low Lives

First, I've been laying low, blog-wise – dealing with some family issues – thanks for your patience. That aside . . . .

The following vidi is one of a number of performance videos on Low Lives.



Low Lives describes itself as "an international exhibition of live performance-based works transmitted via the internet and projected in real time at multiple venues throughout the U.S. and around the world. Low Lives examines works that critically investigate, challenge, and extend the potential of performance practice presented live through online broadcasting networks. . . . Low Lives is not simply about the presentation of performative gestures at a particular place and time but also about the transmission of these moments and what gets lost, conveyed, blurred, and reconfigured when utilizing this medium." Looks like the next exhibition/broadcast dates are: April 29, 2011: Low Lives 3 Exhibition-Day 1 - 8:00pm – 11:00pm (U.S. EST) April 30, 2011: Low Lives 3 Exhibition-Day 2 - 3:00pm – 6:00pm (U.S. EST).

UPDATE: You can find Low Lives 3 here.

Colbert's True Colors

Last night, Colbert provided a hilarious recap of the HBGary v. Anonymous fiasco:

He went on to interview Glenn Greenwald, the journalist targeted by HBGary:

In case you missed it, here's a screen grab of the single frame (at 3:22 in the foregoing clip) in which Colbert is masked/unmasked (art as true lie) (@MikeRiggs, thanks for the screen grab!) Note, the frame appears shortly after he asks Glenn earnestly, "Are you Anonymous??" – which suggests the possibility that the insert was planned before the taping.

We are all Anonymous.

Re- Re-Reading a Really Interesting Essay by Seth Price,

Dispersion (and thanks to Alison Hearst at the Modern of Fort Worth for bringing it to my attention); recommended . . . one thought it inspired: that for each art work shown via GoogleArtProject, the page for that work should include a chat facility where you can "meet" others who happen to be in the same "room" and discuss the work with them, as you might if you were in a bricks-and-mortar museum. (Image: screen grab of Chow time on the Madrid front, artist unkown, from the Museo Reina Sofia via GoogleArtProject.)

Baptists Claim to Discover Internet’s Purpose, to the Amusement of Anonymous

From Rawstory:

Members of Pastor Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church claim to have discovered the underlying purpose of the Internet: using it "to tell this nation & this world that your [i.e., the Anons'] destruction draws nigh."

* * * * *
"GOD HATES FAGS & LOUSY 'HACKERS!'" they declared, apparently responding to a missive from protest group "Anonymous," which was well known for becoming a persistent antagonist to another group of religious fanatics: the Church of Scientology.

(Yes, it's the same church that threatened to burn Qur'ans.) Thanks for the lulz; but while the Anons could certainly take over the Baptists' computers, the more important question – as the Baptists suggest – is, can the Anons win the p.r. battle for Americans' "hearts and minds"? (Although having Westboro on the other side should help.)

More at Rawstory; and more re- the fictitious "threat" against the Baptists at PCWorld (fundies are just so ends-justify-the-means, but w/o taking responsibility for the consequences other than the one they're fixated on).

Solidarity

Politico reports:

MADISON, Wis. — Someone in Egypt has been paying attention to what’s happening in Madison and wanted to send a message of solidarity from across the globe — so they ordered pizza.

It might seem like a small gesture, but it’s overwhelming to the staff at Ian’s on State Street — a campus staple mere blocks from the Capitol — where in the last few days, they’ve fielded calls from concerned citizens of 12 countries, and 38 out of 50 states looking to donate money to provide free pizza to the Wisconsinites who have congregated here.

Happy V-Day!